Hard Drive Failure - Data Recovery

[james t kirk]

My Hard Drive on my home computer has bitten the dust.

The computer is about 6 years old and the hard drive will not fire up the computer anymore. All I get is this thunking sound from the hard drive.

The Dell Logo comes on, but then it says there is a failure and press f1 to reboot or f2 for the bios menu.

Neither works.

Tried calling Dell to no avail. Tried this, tried that, nothing worked.

I had the problem once before, but the computer asked me if I wanted to boot up in safe mode. Yes, and the problem was solved for a few months.

Now, no such luck.

Question:

1. Anyone have any advice?

2. Dell suggested buying a new hard drive and recovering the data from this hard drive. I don't think it's worth it. Opinions?

3. Any recommendations on where to take this POS to get the data recovered?

thanks

 

[hunter001]

You could try putting it another PC as a slave drive to see if you can see anything on the drive at all.

You have anything on there that you need? If you don't it probably isn't worth recovering.

 

[Cobster]

Well first, wrong forum Cpt. Kirk

Second, it's worth it, only if YOU see it to be worth the headache of recovering/saving files. =)

Tons of recovery programs out there, one that comes to mind that was VERY impressive getdata.com. I saved someone's files in their outlook which most other programs couldn't.
There's also a new beta called, www.recuva.com

Good luck

 

[james t kirk]

You could try putting it another PC as a slave drive to see if you can see anything on the drive at all.

how do you do this?

 

[hunter001]

If you have another pc, crack open the case, put in old drive in one empty drive bays, plug in a power cable, and a controller cable that is running from another drive. I am assuming that everything is IDE.

(There may be some jumpers on the drive that you have to remove. They should be in the back near where the power and controller cable hooks up to the drive).

If you boot up you the bios should pick up the new (old) drive. If that doesn't work unlook power and controller cable and ask again.

If you don't have an prior experience with this kind orfstuff it might help to get a nerd friend step you through it.

 

[osanowo]

and if you think your HD is dead you can put it in the freezer before doing the above mentioned. it actually works...

Now if it was only a problem of HD then you should still be able to access the BIOS of your motherboard. If you can't then you need to check your keyboard, or mount your HD as described previously...

 

[Sasha Jones]

and if you think your HD is dead you can put it in the freezer before doing the above mentioned. it actually works...

Yes but this only works if the hard drive has failed from siezed bearings or something similar and is not physically spinning up anymore, this will not help an onboard chip failure.
And if this is the way you choose to recover your data from a physically dead drive you'd better be quick about it.... it usually only works once and you usually only have so much time to get the data off the drive before it warms and siezes up again.

But yes, it does work

 

[Radio_Shack]

Rather then putting the drive in as second drive on the IDE bus you might also try buying a USB case for around $20 and connect it via USB to another computer. If the drive is ok it will at least get you your data with out having to run some low level recovery.

Only you can decide if "it's worth it" to recover your data. What did you have on there? Was it important? Do you have a backup? Things to ponder before putting anytime on this.

 

[osanowo]

Yes but this only works if the hard drive has failed from siezed bearings or something similar and is not physically spinning up anymore, this will not help an onboard chip failure.
And if this is the way you choose to recover your data from a physically dead drive you'd better be quick about it.... it usually only works once and you usually only have so much time to get the data off the drive before it warms and siezes up again.

But yes, it does work

True true... and the trick is to buy these adapters that you plug on AC and transforms the IDE in a USB... there is no cover, it's all bulk, but the wires allows you to leave the HD inside the freezer. You know the rest...

Now you could also send your HD to Germany and they will do it for 2500$, or find the same electronics (same ref same model) in case of a chip failure...

 

[james t kirk]

It's not a chip problem.

I can hear the hard drive clunking.

I believe the hard drive is spinning, I can hear that too. It's almost like whatever reads the HD isn't moving. It's trying to, hence the noise.

I have had this problem twice in the past. I kept turning the machine on and off, and eventually it prompted me whether or not I wanted to boot up in safe mode. I did so, and it worked.

It sounds to me like everyone is saying to put the existing fucked up HD into a machine that IS working and the other machine will read it like another HD.

I opened up my computer and there are about 3 other connectors on the same wires that run into the HD that are capped. At the advice of Dell, I swapped these to no effect.

There's nothing incredibly important on there other than some photos and some emails.

In the future, I'll be backing up.

 

[james t kirk]

Rather then putting the drive in as second drive on the IDE bus you might also try buying a USB case for around $20 and connect it via USB to another computer.

\

What is a USB case?

 

[hunter001]

\

What is a USB case?

It is a external drive case you can buy which allows you to mount the drive via a usb cable.

Basic it is a portable drive. It might work but again it depends what it is worth to you. If your drive is cooked for good you would have a case that you could mount another drive in (if you have one).

 

[cdog]

Our store would charge between 75 to $95 to recover the data if its possible. We have certain tools that most don't. If the data is critical there are companies that will remove the actual plater and retieve the data. this usually costs 200 to $300 plus the cost of a new drive. ADVICE. When ever you start having probelms with you drive DUMP it and transfer to a new drive. They cost less than $100.

 

[MarkII]

I know it sounds odd...but put the drive in a freezer for a few hours. Make sure you have a similar setup as mentioned above. The ability to take the drive from the freezer, couple it and swap the info to a IDE drive on the system for speed.

I had a computer store do this and it really worked quite well.

Cooling the drive down shrinks the materials enough to allow the data transfer.

Goo luck!

 

[osanowo]

I am concerned about the fact that you cannot access the BIOS by F2... that usually means that either your keyboard or your motherboard is dead.

 

[canucklehead]

Pop the drive out put it in a firewire case ..plug it into a mac and either read the drive or make a disk image of the drive....using the CLI.. command line iterface....The Unix program dd is a disk copying util that you can use at the command line in order to make a disk image. It makes a bit-by-bit copy of the drive it's copying, caring nothing about filesystem type, files, or anything else. It's a great way to workaround the need for Norton Ghost.x

Normally, in order to make a disk image, the disk you're copying from has to be able to spin up and talk -- in other words, it's OK to make a copy if the disk is healthy. But what happens when your disk is becoming a doorstop? As long as it continues to spin, even with physical damage on the drive, dd and Mac OS X will get you out of the fire.x

We had a situation recently where a friend sent a disk to us that had hard physical errors on it. It would boot in Windows, but then it would hit one of these scratch marks and just die. We fired up dd, and it started OK, but stopped at the same physical error location -- complaining about a Hard Error.

So the workaround was to designate the dd mode as noerror -- which just slides over the hard stops, and to add the mode sync, which fills the image with nulls at that point. We did it on BSD Unix, but as long as you can get the hard drive attached to your Mac, the command is the same:
dd bs=512 if=/dev/rXX# of=/some_dir/foo.dmg conv=noerror,sync
The bs=512 designates block size, and the if=/dev/rXX# is the UNIX path to the actual disk device. Make sure that the chosen directory (some_dir) has enough room to take the entire disk image -- which will be equal to the size of the drive. Since dd doesn't care about the contents of the drive, it copies every bit on the thing, so you get an image equal to the disk's capacity. A really big file. One workaround is to put it on a RAID array.x

Once you've established the disk image (in this example, foo.dmg), you're almost home. Here's where your Mac OS X box is far and away the best thing to have. In this example, the dd output file is foo.dmg. You have to realize that this is an exact copy of a busted drive, but the "holes" are filled with nulls. As long as the damage isn't to the boot sector, though, when you double-click on it, Mac OS X mounts it without breathing hard ... who cares if it's FAT32, NTFS, whatever.x

Due to the size of the image that we were copying, we put it on a RAID array, and had to access the image over the network -- it still mounted fine. In straight UNIX, if you try to mount a disk image, it complains that there is "no block device" and fails. Once your image is mounted, it appears in your Finder, and then it's easy work to retrieve the critical files from the image -- usually things like .doc files and .xls files and the lot.x

Finally, since your disk is actually dying, once you have your image, you can drop it to tape or something and you've not only recovered your files, you've made a viable backup as well. Once again, that which destroys a Windows box becomes a play thing to a Mac OS X box.
__________________

 

[motorlube2001]

Data Recovery from a DOA Hard Drive can get very very costly. Someone told me it can easily run you between $100-$150 for every GIG that is recovered, don't know if that is actual truth or exaggeration.

For future reference, buy yourself some re-writeable DVD's. Every so often (I do it once a week as my computer is very active) back up all your important files. Simple! At least when your hard drive decides to say goodbye, all your important stuff is saved and your losses are very minimal.

Any how, if the info on that Hard drive was important, bite the bullet, find a company that does Hard Drive Data Recovery and recover only what you think you need, otherwise, toss it and buy a new one.

 

[benstt]

and if you think your HD is dead you can put it in the freezer before doing the above mentioned. it actually works...

Now if it was only a problem of HD then you should still be able to access the BIOS of your motherboard. If you can't then you need to check your keyboard, or mount your HD as described previously...

Another trick to try is the opposite -- turn it on, let the computer warm up for an hour, then try a reset. Not sure why -- sticky lubricants that loosen up when warm, whatever, this sometimes works too.